October 02, (THEWILL) – A Community leader in Amatu II in Ekeremor Local Government Area of Bayelsa State, Chief Paul Oweipade, has rejected purported demands by communities at Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) Estuary Area (EA) for a separate Host Community Development Trust (HCDT).
The Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) provides for the incorporation of Host Community Development Trust (HCDT) in oil and gas-producing communities where oil/gas companies are mandated to make an annual contribution to the HCDT of an amount equal to 3% of the company’s actual annual operating expenditure of the preceding financial year for developmental projects in the host communities.
However, some community leaders informed SPDC that they don’t want to be clustered alongside other communities of the EA oil field under one HCDT, a demand that has been rejected by a section of chiefs and elders of Amatu II Community.
Reacting, Chief Oweipade, in a statement made available to newsmen in Yenagoa weekend, said the purported decision for a separate HCDT is coming as a surprise to the people of the EA host communities, particularly Amatu II Community, who are well known for their prowess in multinational oil companies, government and community relations and administrations.
Oweipade said: “Amatu I, Amatu II, Besangbene, Letugbene, Azamabiri, Orobiri, and Ogbeintu communities seeking for a separate HCDT should be ignored because the people of Amatu II, situated directly opposite the sea Eagle, whom the acronym EA was founded, has never sat in a meeting to deliberate and agree to go into a separate HCDT with the aforementioned communities.
“Amatu II community is not a ghost community neither a fishing camp that her leaders can sit in a hotel room or drinking bars to take decisions and expect such decisions to be binding on every person.
“To this purpose, the good people of Amatu II have categorically stated that they are not a party to any separation, so let SPDC and the general public take note.
“Even if the good people of Amatu II deem it fit to seek a separation, it will not be with a community like Azamabiri whose existence is questionable. Let us lecture the advocators of the separation theory, if truly such advocators mean good for the Iduwini kingdom, clusters or institutions or associations are found on either ancestry backgrounds or common laws benefits or coercion, but since we have been put together as a group based on common law’s benefits by the government and SPDC, we are good with it.
“But if this association of common law’s benefits fails in future, we cannot practice other common law benefits, instead we will embrace ancestry backgrounds, which Azamabiri, Orobiri and Ogbeintu do not belong to and will not ever belong to, because we are Iduwini people.
“Interestingly, if truly the people of Amatu II community want to seek a separate PIA, it will be an Iduwini all-inclusive PIA, where the following communities and others of Iduwini origin are to be host, namely: Amatu I, Amatu II, Amatu-agoliyo, Ikeka-ama, Ingodiama, Igunugbene, Lagos-ama, Besangbene, Letughene 1, Letughene 2, Aghoro 1, Aghoro 2, Bakiri-ama, Iyapregha-zion and others of Iduwini origin not these other communities like Azamabiri.”
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